A clumsy, empty MUD with some unique features and innovations, but unfortunately it's all soured by the staff head, who insists on prolonging arguments over even the smallest and most polite of disagreements until he or she has the last word. Telling your players to "fuck off" and repeatedly insulting them when they're being nothing but polite is immature beyond even the lowest dredges of Twitter. If you can't handle criticism, if you're corrupted by the power of administrative powers on the flipping Internet of all things, you clearly cannot manage even the slightest bit of stress. To get so unwound is one transgression, but to reason absolution simply because you run a game, or a forum, or a chat server on the Internet, is the product of an unstable individual who needs to seek help. Learn your place in this world, and limit your interactions if you cannot conduct yourself with equitable respect regardless of your position, however valid it may be.

Vella dishonors Adamantine and the others who have recently passed on that developed Edge of Midnight along its venerable history.

Comment posted on Thu 12 Sep 2019 08:57:02 AM MST by Vella:

Ah yes, former staff member. I was wondering when you would post your salty review.
I will just bullet point the failures leading to your IMHO worthless review.
1> Tried to "white knight", but was unneeded. The person is still on the mud and doing well :)
2> Tried to challenge their boss, in a non democratic environment, and was warned and then fired.
3> Overvalued themselves, without producing meaningful work, beyond what a player can produce, a factor leading to your dismissal.

And in closing, as far as I can tell your just a drifter that came in a few months ago. You never knew any of the elder staff, if you did, you'd know how silly you sound.

So where to begin, MUME. Itís a difficult thing to explain to others. Iíve been playing this game since 1996 with quite a few breaks - every time Iíve tried a new game (like wow, lotro, other mmorpgs) i always end up coming back to mume.
Iíve often pondered why and I will try to explain.
Games for me involve emotion, I have to feel a bond to the character and enjoy playing it. It has to be challenging and yet rewarding. There has to be both solo and group challenges, for whatever mood I am in and how much time there is available.
Most games meet these requirements for a time, but it often becomes just a pure grind. Not on mume though.
There is no game ever that has gives so much emotion, from the immense thrill of player killing (with its harsh punishments and rich rewards) to the long evenings where you slowly explore, learn and xp with friends. And quite a few of those have been a lot more talking and getting to know the players behind the keyboard than actually doing something real in game.
It is a hard game to get started on - but a few changes has been made since the last reviews on here. There is now a starting area with quests and rewards on the whitie (whitepuke) side. On the dark side or the zaugurz side there is no such aid.
The players are mostly always helpful and aiding (just donít spam/annoy).
It is a huge game, enormous with good written descriptions. There are loads of mobs (npc), doors and quite a lot of hidden secrets. The game has its own language to control the interactivity of rooms, exits, mobs, equipment and movement. There are roots that trap you, roofs that collapse if youíre to heavy and unrelenting rangers that hunt.

The complexity, the playerbase and the game itself has to be experienced. And if you come join the rich Tolkien based world - stay a while and learn and get passed the first steep learning curve.

NewWorlds has always been a promising MUD held back by gross staff overreach and painfully obvious favoritism toward bootlickers and donators.

I have been playing NWA on and off (currently way off) since beta, way back in 2004. In the ensuing decade-and-a-half, I have grown and changed dramatically. Andrew and the staff, not so much. In fact, the prevailing attitudes that I noticed as a younger player have only become a more crystallized and exaggerated version of itself as time has passed.

But let's start with the good: Much of the playerbase itself is quite enjoyable to roleplay with. This is a group that is devoted to the community they've helped establish. There's a reason that people stick with the game as long as they do, and it's because when the roleplay is good, it's very good. The creativity shown by these people never ceases to surprise and delight me. But the overall quality of RP has dropped dramatically over the years. Many players can't even be bothered to properly capitalize and punctuate their sentences, which seems like the bare minimum you can ask for in an "RP-Enforced" MUD. (I know that there are blind players who cannot do this easily, and obviously they get a pass). One of the strongest players in the game I think I have literally never seen stay in character for more than a couple minutes before he devolves into jokes and memes that so clearly break the rules. Of course, nothing ever comes of this, presumably because he has spent upwards of a thousand dollars for the privilege of saying "look at me, I am the captain now." And of course he's a thief, which is supposed to be the super secret guild reserved for the best roleplayers. I see a theme starting to develop...

The support system for newer players is probably the strongest part of the game. Players and staff alike are helpful to the max, and tours tend to be very informative and help give a little social circle with which to begin roleplaying. But the current head of the Immigrant (new player) Guild - good lord, the brazenness with which she abuses her privileges is astounding. This woman has expanded the responsibilities of the office to basically allow her to impose herself into seemingly every important "player-led" decision in the game, all without even bothering to play on a separate account from her Staff account. And this is to say nothing about her frankly abusive behavior when she encounters any sort of resistance. She will cuss you out in the most public possible manner, and continue to mock you on global communication channels for days afterwards. Try and respond in kind, and she'll accuse you of getting off-topic, or something like that. Openly abusing your position as a staff member is bad enough, but if you're going to do that, shouldn't you at least try to model how a good player should act?

Of course, Andrew himself loves to beam down and make sure his dollhouse is going exactly the way he wants it to. He's arbitrarily stripped guild leaders of their titles because they don't kowtow to his vision of what that guild represents, even if the guild is functioning perfectly fine. And he threatens to basically reset your character if you dare to disagree with him at all. I've seen multiple players quit over this oppressive attitude (myself included), and it's no way to run a MUD that is ostensibly supposed to be player-driven. In fact, nothing actually important is player-driven. If you want to give a speech in the center of town, godspeed! If you want to have any meaningful impact on the game world, better pony up the dough or sit down.

It just goes to show you that the biggest babies in the room are often adults.

And yes, the grind is so insurmountable at higher levels that the call of a monetary solution is hard to resist. There is rampant abuse of OOC chat clients like skype to ensure that the same cliques stay together and keep everyone else from messing with THEIR fun. Of course, this is often ignored by staff because the cliques in question are made up of high-rollers who have dropped a bunch of cash on the game.

So, all in all, if you've got an office job and you want an experience that's exactly one step above Cookie Clicker, give this MUD a shot. Otherwise, I would strongly encourage you to look elsewhere. Maybe give it a few months so you can enjoy the experience of being a new player, but once you see Andrew try to cobble together a coherent sentence during an important RP event, run for the hills.

Comment posted on Tue 03 Sep 2019 07:08:42 PM MST by Long Timer:

I agree with much of what Zerbo said. The playerbase can be fun and engaging, creative and enjoyable. The rare few and betweens anyway. What I want to add to that part is that often player run events, with lots of writing and effort thrown into them, will rarely have more than 20 players attend. This would be great if not for the staff run "events" that have 40-50 attending and the roleplay is so lacking in quality and substance, doesn't involve half as much heart as the player run events and definitely not as enjoyable. Though again, the most common roleplay you will encounter is just one step above roleplay encouraged. You can't talk about the real world events, but you can tweak meme culture just enough for it to be acceptable. Blood for the blood god was a thing for a few months in character.

The mentioned high level thief is indeed the worst of the bunch when it comes to memes and puns. Though you can lump him in with the immigrant AGM's category as well. He was a staff member and he abused the position as well. He is known to have cheated through breaking "help second" (which is basically, you can't have your characters interact with each other) while also bullying those he didn't like away from the game. This is something he had done quite often.

As for guild leader matters, while there have been the quick stripping of titles just because why not. More often than not the guilds will be manned by characters who are inactive more often than not. They'll sit idle for months, hardly logging in, barely contributing and nothing will progress. This leads to stale roleplay and people quitting.

The grind is 100% legitimate. It is brutal at higher levels, especially if you work on skills. One death can set you back literal real life months of progress. OOC cliques are also commonplace and if you are not one of them, then you do not go on the more adventurous aspects of the game, to the harder end game content.

Another huge portion of the game that wasn't mentioned is that erotic/romantic roleplay is a core component of this game. If that is your thing, no judging. Just know that often there are drama rousing queens that like to stir up trouble. There are more than a fair share of players that looooove the attention of relationship drama. Often the public bar wench will repeat player provided gossip who is sleeping with who and how much of a slut this other person is, as well.

The game is easy to grasp and play. It is a timer game though. For all the money making and experience grinding, you have to be logged in for the timer to go down. If you don't idle, you don't progress. If you are looking for a laid back game to get your fantasy vibe going, then this isn't a bad choice, as long as you don't get too invested and don't step on the power player's toes. If you are actually seeking fulfilling roleplay with immersive elements? This will never ever been that niche.

I considered leaving a more in-depth review after my time spent here, though I find it regretful to admit that it would be very similar to that of the one most recent(Posted December 12, 2018) and almost redundant. So I will add what little I can while acknowledging such when necessary.

††There certainly are people within the playerbase who care deeply about the shared experience offered towards players. Their patience knows no bounds, and they have my utmost respect for carrying on despite those who make it difficult. That being said, their excuses are easy to make with an admittedly small playerbase that has been around for many years, some of them even handed a spot as an Immortal - of which there is a baffling amount with how much work is needed to be done that simply isn't. Immortal responsibilities, as stated in the previous review, are a tangled mess and held back by those absent - my limited experience, and on a completely different MUD mind you, as an Admin(glorified Customer Service in my case) makes this easier to understand and accept, although precautions should have been taken to prevent these problems from growing to the state they're presently in.

††With the aforementioned playercount is the inevitable relaxation of rules or, more accurately, a reluctance to hold people accountable. Again, the other review had mentioned how this more-or-less results in badmouthing other players(not characters) openly across public channels, both former and current with little regard for respect or privacy. I had witnessed this twice, and it did involve the participation of staff. Were this a more private environment it would be expected, but in the presence of new players and with a desperate need for such, it reflects poorly on the community and forms a terrible first impression, not to mention souring the mood for those wanting to abstain from such drama.

††Erotic Roleplay is discussed quite often and, as others have hinted at, is seemingly an obsession of the playerbase. Before accusations are leveled my way, I have no shame in partaking and, as a writer, have done my fair share of oddities for sheer amusement. I don't see it as a problem in and of itself. I see it as a problem when it is a barrier for roleplay, or what entices those to bring new players into the clique. I've witnessed it and also took part myself - offer yourself as a carrot on a stick and you will be brought in and, depending on how open you are, elevated to a more desirable status. Vella was a nobody until I set her to be sexually available, in which I found her pulled into a longstanding storyline that had been and possibly still is on hold and on a first name basis with characters that had otherwise completely ignored her regardless of past roleplay. My perspective had shifted drastically, and not in a good way - it cheapened my views of the MUD and, unfortunately, I had less respect for those who were, In-Character, prominent figures of the community. A possibly uncouth accusation, though the coincidence allows for interpretation.

††This MUD, the stories it holds, the constant additions to its codebase; they're let down by apathy.
I wanted to put my heart into my character and forge her destiny, but my attempts failed. I became disappointed. When I did get involved in something important? I didn't feel I'd earned it.

So I quit.

Comment posted on Fri 19 Jul 2019 08:24:02 PM MST by Anonymous:

I found this review to be very informative.

Comment posted on Thu 15 Aug 2019 01:09:55 AM MST by Annon:

Gotta say, its something I've noticed with myself, my alts and anything in between. The community can often be very toxic in terms of "claiming" different players. Sex, sex based RP and everything involved with it is something that has continued to drive the game forward. If you aren't "in bed" with someone important, you will barely ever see any form of RP that is positive or consistent. Sorry that it was a thing that drove you out, its quickly becoming a thing that drives myself out as well.

Comment posted on Thu 22 Aug 2019 05:38:21 PM MST by Vidik:

I'm sorry you felt it necessary to leave, Vella.

TG certainly has this atmosphere of accepting players that can handle these extreme adult themes, both IC and OOC. All of the reviews reveal what type of game it is. Adult means the themes for adults will happen. Have to choose what's best for you, and where you feel most comfortable. The owners, and with them the other staff of the game, will determine what continues, and what doesn't, as they control it.

However, a ruined day is a ruined day, even if it's a game.

Vella, I'm sorry you couldn't be comfortable enough to stay. I hope you at least had a few good times. I hope you have now found a game you can benefit from and it benefit from you, too.

Comment posted on Mon 02 Sep 2019 04:40:25 PM MST by Vella:

I cannot question the motives behind your commenting, Vidik, as I enjoyed many moments I've experienced here and would absolutely defend what there is that deserves it. But to make such an assumption and accuse me of being squeamish towards Adult Themes rather than reading my voiced concerns and accepting that, just maybe, there are people who would sour my enjoyment, not through a supposed oppression of "Adult" verbiage and concepts but through bitter or manipulative suggestion?
My issue is not with consensual and sensual mirth but with that being a requirement of many to engage in storylines with a group larger than my lonesome.
My issue is not with OOC discussion of said In-Character exploits but with the discussion of a player's very real and personal life in a derogatory manner.
Do not mistake my desire for roleplay as a revulsion of "Adult Themes," as I engaged in those as willingly as I did the mundane. I gave this MUD a chance despite the reviews and am glad that I did for what little time I had to enjoy it.
Your defense is admirable. Though I beg of you, you truly exceptional individual; pick your battles wisely. I want the MUD to improve. I voiced concerns with hopes people would wake up. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. I can't go back anymore because, clearly, people have read this and taken offense to it - good for them, they're enjoying the game the way they want to. But I didn't, so I spoke up.

Looking for new adventures I chose the oldest Diku mud in existance. Unfortunately, the newbie training area is flawed in design. It allows a character to find themselves facing a trainer who will kill you and in my case inside a dark room without the equipment to leave.
No helpful hints in the room text to suggest an escape route or command. The only equipment provided was a purple potion whereas in my opinion a lamp would have allowed the user to see their way around.
Allowing a new player to end up in a room with no plausible escape leads to nothing but frustration and does nothing for player retention.

Armageddon is quite possibly the poorest-administrated roleplay-enforced game in existence. The bloated staff body is often between 12 to 15 members in size, 3 to 4 times larger than some smaller MUDs. The end result is a mismanaged bureaucracy that slows down roleplay and player plots. The staff use their powers to gain special privileges for their own mortal characters - and yes, the staff are allowed to play mortal characters in this game - and to give special privileges to their friends, such as special items or roles to fill. As a staff member, in four instances I noticed an administrator tweaking their character's skill levels and giving them weapons that looked similar to some basic equipment but had more powerful damage dice.

The game has been bleeding players for years. They are fleeing for a reason. This chart shows the number of weekly logins per week from 2010, when the game started counting unique weekly logins, to 2019: https://i.imgur.com/pJ5xhtp.png
The reason why the game is bleeding players is quite simple. There is nothing to do in the game. Armageddon is supposed to have a plot driven by conflict, but staff, as well as players in powerful positions, stamp out all conflict as soon as it starts for fear it might threaten their characters or those of their friends. It has been happening for years. Any plot in the game is manufactured by staff and only supported for the duration of the plot itself. Once the plot is over, nobody cares what happens so long as you aren't drawing on staff's precious red tape time or threatening any players.

This game is perhaps the only game with an unofficial message board where people have aired their grievances without fear of being censored by the staff or shouted down by the game's sycophantic players who have built out-of-game connections with the staff. I won't post the link here but it is pretty easy to find if one conducts a Google search for "armageddon mud", since it will be at or near the top of the search results, along with other reviews of Armageddon posted on other websites.

The game is a shadow of its former self. The old positive reviews on this site are written by players who experienced a different era of the game or are hoping to get a karma handout from staff. Karma allows players to play more powerful roles, and to get it, you must essentially beg the staff for it, much like one must beg a boss for a raise. The staff know how valuable karma is to its players and will dangle it over people's heads to get them to jump through hoops. Often a request for more karma is denied, and staff will lay out the framework for how a player must play in order to gain more karma. These rules often include avoiding conflict with other players.

As a staff member, I am doing my best to change things from the inside. But it's impossible for me to do much of anything. I'm a storyteller, the lowest-ranked staff member, and I have no ability to affect staff policy. I'm posting this here because I've exhausted every other attempt to talk to higher-level staff about the state of the game and this is probably the only way to get their attention at this point. I will probably get fired from the staff body for this post, but at this point, I can't do anything else.

TG has many great features. Too many to talk about in a review, but that need to be experienced. I particularly love the large world to use and explore, extended colors, and the gmote system that allows you to interact with characters and objects in the same mote. It has many features to use for a lot of creativity, some which you may never really feel the need to use, and don't have to. Pop in and give it a chance over a few days, even weeks to get used to the colors since other MUDs don't have as many. You're also able to turn off the colors if you don't like them. Many choices are available here to customize your experience. Stay for the good. If something has put you off of the, the staff appreciate being told so they'll have a chance to change it. If you do like it, please share it with your friends to enjoy this vast, creative world built by many different people over many years.

As of current (July 2019) the MUD are fairly new and rapidly growing, usually seen 2-3 new players everyday with players fluctuate from 0-15 on peek hours.

<> Game Mechanics:

*Character progression: are levels and skills based system. You gain 1 skill point everytime you level up for a total of 100 skill points. These points can be spend to mix and match however you want with 12 different skills allows you ultimate freedom in character building. Ability are specials you can use while Skill gives you new abilities and increase their performace. Each skill have a cap of 20, after certain ranks in skill you gain a new ability, at rank 20 you gain the signature ability for that skill.

*The combat: are Balance based. After you attack or use ability you will become Unbalanced (cooldown) and cannot do anything else until you are Balanced again. Unbalanced time are usually between 1-5 seconds depends on your weapon type or character build. The pace of combat are fast enough so you never get bored and slow enough to allows human interaction.

*Balance of builds: (Almost) Perfectly balanced as all things should be. A common problem all RPG game must face and they are doing a very good job at it. "What are the worst build?" are our inside joke because there are no such thing, all builds are playable so it all come down to which one do you like instead of which one are most powerful.

<> Feature sets:

*Detailed world: Rooms description are detaily described, writing are great, a lot of interactive contents in the game and minimal typos.

*Immersion and Roleplay: are very encouraged but not enforced. All game contents are designed and polished to promote roleplay and immersion, there are world chat channel for OOC while everything else are IC.

*Guilds: There are 4 guilds allows you to further customize your character with general theme of Wizard, Druid, Assassin, Army. This doesn't mean you cannot play a wizard in Army or Assassin, or play an assassin in Wizard or Army, nothing are restricted and they are all designed to cater for all playstyle/build. Beside from abilities you gain from guild, they are also main Roleplay platform with guild title can only be gain through roleplay, those titles are purely bragging rights and have zero practical impact.

*Craft: are customized and lite system currently, with plans to expand it further in future. For now you won't found advanced recipe requires 20 different parts and dozens of each parts to craft an epic item, but more like foraging components to brew consumable potion, color mix for scribing spell scrolls etc

*Exploration: Go hand in hand with your character progression, you will never get bored with a bunch of different dungeons with secrets and lores for each of them and a real boss fight in the end, not just a bigger monster.

*Quest: Prepare for the Quest-aholic syndrome with over 1000 quests, some belong to a questline, most are kill/collect/find items quest. Best thing? They are not enforced! and rewards boost your character progression a lot.

*Grind: There are endless grind, but skill points cap are lv100. Take about 1-2 months if you are active to reach lv100. That to me are good grind:reward ratio and I enjoy it.

*Standardized UI: Near zero weird syntaxes because everything are hinted, standardized to waste you zero time to figure out the right combination of letters while playing RPG. All important info such as room name/exits, NPCs, quest, items are all colored. If you have tendency to play on mobile, worry not for Asteria are mobile friendly! With Blowtorch and MUDRammer you can play this MUD almost as good as PC client, no extensive scripts are required.

<> The Community:

*Staffs: are very friendly, keen on players inputs and allows players to develop the game along side with them through ideas. Several of my ideas has already been implemented. Within 2.5 years 2 devs built a MUD with ~15000 rooms and expanding, featuring polished contents and in-depth mechanics are definitely an impressive feat for me. All game mechanic are transparent so there are close to none differences in this regard between experienced and new players. If you don't know something, ask!

*Players: Very friendly and helpful towards newplayers, most are very keen on roleplay.

<> Downside:

All in all, the biggest downside is that the game is still in development, as much as devs may try, 2 persons can only get you so far, there are much rooms to grow and your ideas are important! Asteria also lack map so only way to know your way around is to get throroughly lost several times, luckily home recall are common here. lol

I've got hooked on the game for 2 weeks so there are a lot of praise as you can see but I tried to make this as close to what I experienced as possible. Thank you for spending your time and read my long review, hope you enjoy it and give the game a try! :)

Comment posted on Tue 06 Aug 2019 03:25:38 AM MST by Celse:

Edit: I wrote 12 skills for mix and match above, this is a typo, the number are 22 skills not 12 skills.